This morning we learned that yesterday at least 3 people were killed and over 24 hospitalized after a boat carrying immigrants capsized off Point Loma near San Diego, California. The cause is yet unknown, but the condition of the boat’s captain is in question.
The questions of the ethics of fostering mass immigration occupies my mind constantly. People suffer horrible consequences and die because of the lack of restraint in immigration policy.
Advocates of more, ever more, immigration regardless of the legalities seem to possess a results-oriented assumption concerning the number of new arrivals. Then some proclaim the notion of reception of immigrants being part of “our national DNA”. And we remember Senator Schumer’s comment about not wanting our national symbol to be a ‘wall’, but the Statue of Liberty. Some advocate for a certain cause and pursue that ideologically no matter what.
But what of the ethics of that advocacy when so many negative consequences become shockingly apparent? And we likewise must comprehend the possibilities of negative consequences to immigrants, especially to unaccompanied children, that we may never know. The opportunities for evil to be their lot given the perils of such a journey are so many…
During and after the previous administration, the country has been treated to emotionally charged rhetoric concerning immigration especially at the southern border. Children being “ripped from the arms” of their parents is a favorite, while the phenomenon of thousands of unaccompanied children arriving at overcrowded facilities does not greatly trouble the advocates. And I for one denounce this sort of rhetoric as blatantly unethical in and of itself.
Then it seems that the parents of these children did not mind having abandoned them to others in order to make a dangerous trip of 1,100 to over 2,000 miles depending on the point of entry, ripping their own children from their own arms and placing them in the company of strangers at great expense. In a poor country?
Questions of where the parents obtained the money for such a trip in such a poor nation do not seem to be asked. Neither do we inquire about how so many residents of these poor countries allegedly sell their goods if there are few able to buy them? Then if some are indeed able to buy their goods, why do the prospective purchasers themselves not use their cash, sell their own goods and come to the border to escape their own awful conditions? And how do the parents who sold their goods and gave the proceeds to fund the trip manage to go on themselves having less or nothing? These questions should be asked, and answers presented.
We hear little of those who arrived, but nothing of those who did not. We hear reports of sexual abuses en route, but the number of children whose destinies may have been ‘detoured’ are likewise unknown. There seems to be no reliable ‘census’ taken at the points of origin, and no reliable conclusions reached north of the border. Coyotes have no BBB ratings, and offer no money-back guarantees.
None of these are merely political questions. These are questions of the ethics of fostering mass immigration which this administration clearly has done.
Our broken immigration system? There has been a steady upward average of naturalizations over the past thirty years. Over the past twenty, the sheer numbers ascend and descend between around 500,000 to three notable spikes over 1 million. The overall average is an upswing. Note that these represent the number of new citizens naturalized legally, not the total number of immigrants received. One can hardly describe such a system as ‘broken’. We also note that there is no obligation of this or other nations to receive immigrants, no questions asked.
What is ‘broken’ is a cultural attitude ignorant and/or careless of the human consequences to unregulated immigration and border crossings. The attempts of the current administration to cover up its own disregard for adults and children sleeping shoulder to shoulder on the floor in what looks like an aluminum foil junkyard, its having allowed illegals testing positive for COVID-19 to enter the U.S. population, its appalling lack of leadership presence at the sites proper, testify not of bad policy alone, but a regard only for big numbers making the advocates of open borders and unrestrained immigration look good.
A cure is easily available. Put the ethics before the advocacy, and fewer people will die.
Father David+